Viewing recorded conferences and small-group meetings on conventional players that provide fixed or isolated views of each participant does not provide sufficient information and control to the user who is viewing the recording. Various interactions between the participants that assist in fully understanding the communication are typically not captured by conventional techniques for recording conferences, or are not visible on conventional players used to view a recorded conference later. Thus, the user is likely to miss nuances of communication that were present at the live meeting.
Most users electronically viewing a conference desire more incidental information, such as who the speaker is talking to, who the speaker is making eye contact with, who is interrupting the speaker, and what is happening among the non-speaking participants. Users may want control of context views that show the non-speaking participants in greater detail.
In a typical conventional conference recording scenario, consider a meeting in which five attendees, Alice, Bob, Charlie, Dave, and Eve, are seated around a table. Each attendee's face is captured in a frontal view by a different camera provided with the conference recording equipment. In the user interface of a typical conventional conference player, a large view of the currently interesting event such as current speaker is displayed above thumbnail-size videos of all of the attendees. A panoramic view of the entire meeting room can be shown instead of the thumbnails if an omnidirectional camera is available to capture the meeting.
There are at least two sets of issues with the conventional user interfaces for viewing recorded meetings. One set of issues include the difficulties in interpreting speaker-oriented information, such as who the speaker is talking to, looking at, or being interrupted by. While some of this information can be implicit in the dialogue, there are times when it is not. For instance, during the meeting Bob may ask “What are the fourth quarter profits like?” which sparks a discussion on the company performance in general. Eventually, to answer Bob's question, Alice says “Returning to your question . . . ” and looks at Bob. At that point, everyone present in the meeting room knows that Alice wants to discuss fourth-quarter profits. However, an observer, such as a remote viewer, without the knowledge of who Alice is looking at may get confused. Moreover, as a part of her answer to Bob's question, Alice says “They are better than we expected” and briefly looks at Charlie, who is the accountant, for confirmation. Charlie agrees by nodding without interrupting. At the same time, Eve agrees by saying “Much much better,” which causes Alice to glance in Eve's direction. Everyone in the meeting knows that Charlie and Eve agree with Alice's claim. Someone who is later viewing a recording of this meeting, on the other hand, may neither realize that Charlie agrees with Alice as Charlie does not say anything nor be able to figure out that it was Eve who confirmed what Alice said. The reason is that in the conventional user interface, it is difficult to interpret the direction in which the speaker, or any other attendee, is looking. For instance, when Alice is looking at Eve, she may be looking straight-ahead, which to the users appears as if she is looking at them. Moreover, the user cannot easily tell that Alice first looks at Charlie and then at Eve, regardless of whether the user interface displays thumbnail-size videos of the attendees or a panoramic video of the meeting room.
Another set of issues with conventional user interfaces for viewing meetings concerns context views that do not allow the user to control aspects of the overview. The lack of control, combined with the small visual size of participants in the thumbnail or panoramic views makes it difficult to focus on a non-speaking attendee even though there are instances when the speaker is not the focus of attention.
Also, most conventional systems require substantial infrastructure or hardware setup, such as an omnidirectional camera, a specially positioned IP camera (webcam) and microphones, and carefully designed rooms with dedicated high-speed connections among remote sites. These systems are expensive and difficult to set up.